Paper short abstract:

Deafness is a way of being, a culture, and it has its own way of seeing. Not just a disability, anthropological studies of deaf people and deaf visualities challenge a fragmented visual anthropology in new and compelling ways.

Paper long abstract:

Being deaf is a way of being, a culture and has social implications. It can be argued that deaf ways of seeing lie at the foundations of deaf ways of being, that deaf culture has its own visuality and that this itself leads to a deaf visuality that is waiting to be explored anthropologically. Tied strongly to language and the embodied nature of communication in sign language, an in-depth anthropology of deaf visualities can offer a link between visual anthropological studies of the image, material products of culture and the act of seeing. This paper presents three explorations of deaf ways of seeing from a cultural perspective and argues for a differentiation from hearing ways of seeing. The three empirical examples are drawn from fieldwork at Swedish Television's editorial for programming in Swedish Sign Language. This is a unique site that captures various areas of what has been labelled the multiple and disconnected areas of visual anthropology, and promises to re-connect them.